When it comes to backstabbing and the pursuit of revenge—no one is walking away with their hands clean. Such endeavors require one to get intimate with underhanded affairs—hands and knees in the dirt, tossing and tumbling together like a litter of five-week-old puppies. Of course, this is all metaphorical—in a sense… You won’t actually find the battles of office politics being fought with grown adults tousling on the ground, vying for the upper hand as ties are tugged, and high-heels are repurposed as weapons of concerning effectiveness. Still, the reality is just as immature, with the true battles taking place just as they would in a middle school lunchroom: with whispers, secrets, and the truly incompetent grossly overestimating their abilities.
This IT Head shared their story of fending off an incompetent subordinate who, for years, made backhanded attempts, insisting to anyone who would listen that they deserved the IT Head’s position and pay, requiring each new director who joined the organization to make a judgment call about whether or not there was some substance and truth to their claims.
Of course, by sheer statistical chance, eventually, the subordinate found a willing ear in a new Financial Director who had joined the organization and didn’t like that the IT Head wasn’t willing to bow down to them. The two conspired to rid themselves of the IT Head and install the (still) incompetent subordinate in their place. And so they did, ousting the IT Head by gaining access to their emails and digging up dirt. This would kickstart the IT Head’s revenge arc that would see them both out of jobs. But, like all good revenge stories, all the (now ex) IT Head had to do was wait for their own incompetence to do them in.
It wasn’t too long before the pair realized that they were in well over their heads, leading them to fraudulently complete a government audit that neither of them knew how to complete. When this unfolded, the pair were both out of a job, with the subordinate being fired on the spot. But, that’s not where things would end—the IT Head wasn’t done with them just yet…
